image well beyond the skylight, and bringing in natural
light as far as two storeys down.

‘If you go out on to the street, which is Broadway, you
don’t have much of a sky because of the surrounding
tall buildings, but the dome form gathers the light
from the whole skydome and folds the image of the sky
into the building,’ says Carpenter. ‘It’s not complicated
optics but it’s indicative of how you can change people’s
sense of enclosure.’
On the other side of the continent, the Sky Reflector
Canopy (2015) that JCDA designed for the Frost
Amphitheater at Stanford University uses the
periscope and the cable-net to manipulate Californian
sunshine. The tree-lined grassy bowl, played variously
by the likes of The Grateful Dead and Mikhail
Gorbachev, is organised on a north-south axis and
had been in need of some form of shading since it was
built in 1937. JCDA developed a retractable cable-net
and translucent fabric canopy. When the canopy is
retracted, sky reflectors set parallel to the stage become
visible above the net’s transverse cables. Viewed from
the rear of the bowl, these linear reflections create a
wide periscopic view of the northern sky, but seem to
vanish as the viewer descends toward the stage.

Above and left: the SkyReflector-Net at the FultonCenter, New York. ‘ The domeform gathers the light...and folds the image of thesky into the building’Previous pages: the exteriorenvelope of SOM’s 7 WorldTrade Center, Ne w York,is blank concrete. JCDA’scladding uses triangularprismatic wires to reflect lightby day. At night, LEDs behindthe cladding respond to themovement of pedestriansJamesEwing

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Going below ground, JCDA’s vision for the renewal
of the Israel Museum’s campus included four all-glass
pavilions enclosed by louvres made of terracotta to give
a sense of the exterior while blocking the transmission
of direct light. A major subterranean Route of Passage
leads below a promenade. As visitors make the
transition from the surface the route is flanked by a
light slot enclosed by a prismatic cast-glass water-feature to create a dynamic expression of the sky above.
Inevitably, Carpenter’s use of natural light is tempered
with electric light and vice versa – at Cooper
Robertson’s new west entry and museum addition to
Erno Saarinen’s Museum of Westward Expansion in
St Louis, for example, where Carpenter worked with
Tillotson Design Associates to make the transition
underground seamless. Or the Lens Ceiling (2000)
at Richard Meier and Partners’ Sandra Day O’Connor
Federal Courthouse in Phoenix. The courtroom is built
almost entirely of glass; Carpenter’s dramatic, spherical
cap, engineered by Arup, diffuses both natural and
artificial light, while its clear horizontal perimeter
allows views of the sky from the court’s public gallery.